As a kid… there where only 3 things that I was afraid of… and thought where very, very real existing just outside our door:
- The Untouchables (1959 original T.V. series).
- The Outer Limits (the si-fi T.V. series).
- Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954 original film).
The UNTOUCHABLES
For right now I will talk about “The Untouchables”, because unlike the other two, the Untouchables was, at least for me… something very, very sinister, deep, and dark. I remember that show playing on T.V. as my mother was preparing us (me and my brother) for bed… the opening music, and the dramatic emphasis the narrator of the show placed on each word he was saying hit me like bull, I mean I was spellbound… you have to understand and remember, our living room was already dimly lit, and my father was a returned WWII veteran, so he was already sounding like that narrator himself whenever he spoke, he spoke with a matter-of-factness as if someone’s life depended on it… everything with him was no-nonsense… hearing that… why wouldn’t you believe that everything you where hearing and seeing on T.V. was real, happening now, and is just outside your door. Well, I did, and I was actually TERRIFIED to go outside after dark… and that lasted well into my teenage years.
I have these men pictured here because, “these men” had me scared to go outside… and that’s a true story. If you’d like to listen to and see a little “snippet” of what that was all about… click below… and listen to all of it… if you DARE!!!
My father would disappear at night, and return the next morning… my assumption then was that he was gone on out into the night and existing among what was being presented on T.V. through “The Untouchables”… I though he was brave, and at the same time I did not like him… why would someone go outside and deal with all of that violence, I don’t know, I just don’t like violent men.
Dad; my father at about 45 years old.
As I grew older I came to understand that my father was “not” going out into the night into all of that violence… but instead was going out into the darkness of the world to go to work. My father sometimes worked “midnights” in U.S. Steel… the largest steel mill in the United States at that time, a mill that I would come to know all too well… soon.